Major League Baseball Supports Youth Gender Transitions

Like most of the nation’s major sports leagues, Major League Baseball (MLB) has embraced a number of left-wing causes in recent years. The league’s website now boasts a “social justice” section that promotes texts such as the 1619 Project and White Fragility — as well as authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Angela Davis — and a number of players knelt for the national anthem during the George Floyd protests in summer 2020. In the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays partnered with the progressive gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety to tweet “facts about the impacts of gun violence” rather than the usual clips and game updates during their May 26 game. Major League Baseball’s decision to pull its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s election-integrity law, meanwhile, was the subject of bitter criticism from conservatives.

For all the controversy, these high-profile fights surrounding professional baseball’s flirtation with progressive cultural causes, thus far, have been largely symbolic. But one far less-noticed — and much more significant — aspect of the league’s leftward shift concerns its promotion, directly and indirectly, of gender transitions for minors.

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Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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Like most of the nation’s major sports leagues, Major League Baseball (MLB) has embraced a number of left-wing causes in recent years. The league’s website now boasts a “social justice” section that promotes texts such as the 1619 Project and White Fragility — as well as authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Angela Davis — and a number of players knelt for the national anthem during the George Floyd protests in summer 2020. In the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays partnered with the progressive gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety to tweet “facts about the impacts of gun violence” rather than the usual clips and game updates during their May 26 game. Major League Baseball’s decision to pull its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s election-integrity law, meanwhile, was the subject of bitter criticism from conservatives.

For all the controversy, these high-profile fights surrounding professional baseball’s flirtation with progressive cultural causes, thus far, have been largely symbolic. But one far less-noticed — and much more significant — aspect of the league’s leftward shift concerns its promotion, directly and indirectly, of gender transitions for minors.